Drawing on the Power of Resonance in Writing by David Farland Page A
Authors: David Farland
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You can then look at television— Heroes , Buffy , Spongebob . You might go on to consider videogames, popular music, and the effect that the twin towers has had on the life of a person growing up today.
In short, as you write, you need to be aware of what your reader has probably been influenced by, and then consider whether or not you want to change what you’d like to write in order to better reach a large potential audience.
Resonance Outside of Tolkien
It may sound as if I’ve been pretty exhaustive in my dissecting of Tolkien, but I’ve hardly touched the surface.
Masters at the use of resonance make it a life study.
If you take any major motion picture and study it closely, you will most likely see how it resonates.
For example, if you watch the movie Avatar , you can see plot devices that make it feel like Dances with Wolves meets Fern Gully . Portions of the plot seem to be drawn from a short story by Poul Anderson . Images from the film echo other science fiction movies—from Alien , to Star Trek , to 2001: A Space Odyssey , and so on . A couple of characters created for the movie look suspiciously similar to char acters from popular videogames . Lines from Avatar draw from President George Bush and from the movie the Terminator .
If we studied the music, dialog, plotline, ship design, clothing design, and imagery frame-by-frame, we could see how this film ties into dozens of other major franchises.
Was any of it by accident? No. The best writers and directors are painfully conscious about the works that they’re struggling to resonate with. They’re aware that every piece of literature is part of a greater field of art, and that artists communicate to the world across the generations by joining that conversation.
Recently, I showed some of my students the animated Disney film Tangled , and we studied how animators had made it resonate with dozens of other films, many within Disney’s own franchises. In some ways, animated films—which one might imagine would be the simplest forms of entertainment—can become more complex and self-conscious than works in just about any medium.
Resonance and You
At this point some readers may feel like I’m telling them all to write like Tolkien, to master the use of resonance down to the level of the ceneme . In actuality, I don’t think you need to try to write just like Tolkien—or anyone else.
The truth is that when we try to “create” stories, generally we are simply combining rather common elements. In other words, your story will draw upon the power of resonance whether you mean for it to or not. You’ll combine elements that you love from other arts, from other works, and other lives in order to create something extraordinary.
For this reason, I sometimes suggest that authors try to “marry” uncommon elements . Years ago, one of my young students, Stephenie Meyer, asked “How do I become the bestselling young adult writer of all time.” So we began discussing what her story would be about—a tale that brought together a sense of wonder and romance . As she talked, she sparked ideas on where she might go with this, speaking about her home in Forks, Washington and vampires in the woods . I recall it vividly because I had lived in such a forest in Oregon about ten years earlier, and I realized that, “Yes, it would be a perfect place for vampires.” Her ideas seemed to be vague still, unformed. I warned her that it might be hard to sell such a novel at that time . Major publishers didn’t have any lines for contemporary teen fantasy , and even though a romance made sense from a greenlighting aspect, publishers who’d never printed such books might not back it , but I suspected that with the rise of Harry Potter’s popularity, the major publishers might be looking for something like Stephenie’s books in a few years.
Like many authors, Stephenie’s world came together in a vivid
In short, as you write, you need to be aware of what your reader has probably been influenced by, and then consider whether or not you want to change what you’d like to write in order to better reach a large potential audience.
Resonance Outside of Tolkien
It may sound as if I’ve been pretty exhaustive in my dissecting of Tolkien, but I’ve hardly touched the surface.
Masters at the use of resonance make it a life study.
If you take any major motion picture and study it closely, you will most likely see how it resonates.
For example, if you watch the movie Avatar , you can see plot devices that make it feel like Dances with Wolves meets Fern Gully . Portions of the plot seem to be drawn from a short story by Poul Anderson . Images from the film echo other science fiction movies—from Alien , to Star Trek , to 2001: A Space Odyssey , and so on . A couple of characters created for the movie look suspiciously similar to char acters from popular videogames . Lines from Avatar draw from President George Bush and from the movie the Terminator .
If we studied the music, dialog, plotline, ship design, clothing design, and imagery frame-by-frame, we could see how this film ties into dozens of other major franchises.
Was any of it by accident? No. The best writers and directors are painfully conscious about the works that they’re struggling to resonate with. They’re aware that every piece of literature is part of a greater field of art, and that artists communicate to the world across the generations by joining that conversation.
Recently, I showed some of my students the animated Disney film Tangled , and we studied how animators had made it resonate with dozens of other films, many within Disney’s own franchises. In some ways, animated films—which one might imagine would be the simplest forms of entertainment—can become more complex and self-conscious than works in just about any medium.
Resonance and You
At this point some readers may feel like I’m telling them all to write like Tolkien, to master the use of resonance down to the level of the ceneme . In actuality, I don’t think you need to try to write just like Tolkien—or anyone else.
The truth is that when we try to “create” stories, generally we are simply combining rather common elements. In other words, your story will draw upon the power of resonance whether you mean for it to or not. You’ll combine elements that you love from other arts, from other works, and other lives in order to create something extraordinary.
For this reason, I sometimes suggest that authors try to “marry” uncommon elements . Years ago, one of my young students, Stephenie Meyer, asked “How do I become the bestselling young adult writer of all time.” So we began discussing what her story would be about—a tale that brought together a sense of wonder and romance . As she talked, she sparked ideas on where she might go with this, speaking about her home in Forks, Washington and vampires in the woods . I recall it vividly because I had lived in such a forest in Oregon about ten years earlier, and I realized that, “Yes, it would be a perfect place for vampires.” Her ideas seemed to be vague still, unformed. I warned her that it might be hard to sell such a novel at that time . Major publishers didn’t have any lines for contemporary teen fantasy , and even though a romance made sense from a greenlighting aspect, publishers who’d never printed such books might not back it , but I suspected that with the rise of Harry Potter’s popularity, the major publishers might be looking for something like Stephenie’s books in a few years.
Like many authors, Stephenie’s world came together in a vivid
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